Opposition to garrisoning soldiers in civilian towns was a cornerstone of the American Revolution as well as an essential element of the American civic tradition. The Boston Massacre was a key accelerating event in the build-up to the American Revolution. The 3rd Amendment bans the quartering of soldier in homes except under specific and limited circumstances. I’ve written a number of times about how when it comes to this part of the American civic tradition we’re much too literal today about what constitutes an army or soldiers. Let me say a bit more about that.

Today we tend to think of two groups who wield legitimate violence on behalf of the state: police and soldiers. Police deal with citizens and law and order, while soldiers go to war. But policing organizations and other civilian paramilitaries are a very modern invention. They go back around two centuries and most of their history goes back less than 150 years. Those include metropolitan police departments as well as organizations like the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and various others.

A friend of mine ran an analogy by me which really resonated. Perhaps others have drawn the comparison.

In the late 18th century, what would later evolve into the British Raj was coalescing into full British domination of the Indian subcontinent — especially after two key battles in 1757 and 1764 waged not by Britain but a private company called the British East India Company. That made it possible for what were often British men of relatively modest origins to build almost unimaginably large fortunes. Life in India was a matter of extremes for British operatives of the East India Company, a joint stock company which owned what were in effect Britain’s Indian colonies. Countless young Brits went out to India and died in short order. But if they could avoid dying, in a relatively few years they could build these unimaginable fortunes. None of them wanted to stay. Virtually no Britons died of old age in India at the time. The whole point was to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible and get back to Great Britain while they were still alive. Then they would pour that money into an estate and land.

They were called “nabobs,” a corruption of “nawab,” a title in the Mughal Empire which originally referred to a provincial governor but evolved into something more like a hereditary lord as Mughal rule disintegrated.